Update and Launch of Five Online Library Exhibits

Five online exhibits that were created between 2010 and 2012 to accompany on-site exhibits in the Research Library and Pre-Columbian Studies symposia have been updated and launched on the Dumbarton Oaks website.

Three exhibits highlight materials in the Rare Book Collection. Bookbindings surveys exemplary specimens in the collection, dating from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, and examines some methods of binding books as well as the broader significance of particular materials and styles. Robert & Monnoyerintroduces the work of Nicolas Robert and Jean Baptiste Monnoyer, the leading proponents of two parallel styles of botanical illustration that developed in France during the second half of the seventeenth century. Finally, Before the Blissesexamines the ways in which nineteenth-century collections and illustrated catalogs impacted the study and appreciation of early Christian, Byzantine, and medieval minor arts before Mildred and Robert Bliss began their collection.

Two exhibits accompanying the Pre-Columbian symposia draw from the Rare Book Collection, the Research Library, and the Image Collections and Fieldwork Archives. Capturing Warfarehighlights two representations of warfare in pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica and the Andes: fine line drawings of images painted on Moche ceramic vessels and illustrations from the sixteenth-century Lienzo de Quauhquechollan. The Ancient Futureintroduces the complex and multiple timekeeping systems of the Aztec, Maya, and Inca civilizations.